Ten minutes later, Cody opened the door to the dining area. “Got some shots,” he said. “The man was cleaner than hell. He must have scrubbed his walls. But I got some prints. Make sure we get the evidence tech to lift them.”
Larry stood in the dark in the kitchen and said nothing. Then he shouldered past Cody into the bedroom. The dissipating fog of Fume-It made him cough. When he emerged, he pinched the flashlight between his jaw and shoulder so he could use both hands to hold the ticket jacket up and open it.
“Used tickets and a baggage claim check,” Larry said. “Our man flew here on Delta from Salt Lake City three nights ago.” He dropped the jacket on the table and opened up the wallet.
“His name was…”
“Hank Winters,” Cody said.
“You knew him.”
“Yeah. He was my sponsor.”
3
“Sponsor?” Larry said. “Sponsor?”
As the realization dawned on Larry his face fell. “You mean, like Alcoholics Anonymous?”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “He was my guy. I’ve been up here a couple of times. That’s how I knew where it was and who he was.”
Cody shined his flashlight to where the east wall of the room would have been. “That entire wall was covered with books. Hank was a collector and he had some really valuable first editions. He bought them all over the country when he traveled. Some of those books were really old and dried out. When the fire got to them I bet they went up like cordwood and probably made the fire even more destructive because of the heat of burning paper.”
“But you didn’t say anything. You were holding out on me.”
“You mean knowing him? Or that I was in the program? Or that I think this wasn’t an accident?”
“All of ’em, you son of a bitch. We work together. We talk to each other. No secrets. This is how you got in trouble down in Denver. This is why you’re back in Montana. Damn you, remember when I told you never to put me into a position I didn’t want to be in?”
Cody didn’t shine his flashlight at Larry to see his face. He didn’t need to. Larry was angry, and hurt.
“I wasn’t holding out,” Cody said. “I wanted your honest take on the scene. I wanted you to talk me out of what I was thinking. I hoped you would. You didn’t.”
Larry threw the wallet down on the tabletop. He started to say something but caught himself. Then, mocking, he said, “My name is Cody Hoyt. I’m an alcoholic asshole.”
Cody couldn’t help himself. He laughed.
Larry looked up, surprised. “That’s funny?”
“Yeah, it is. Tonight when I got the call, I nearly double-tapped a doper outside a bar for his twelve-pack of beer.”
Larry looked at him. “How long have you been in AA?”
“Two months. Just two months. Fifty-nine days, five hours to be exact. Hardest time of my life.”
Larry chinned the direction of the body. “And he was your sponsor? I don’t know exactly how this works, but this guy Henry-”
“Hank,” Cody corrected.
“Hank was your sponsor. That means whenever you felt like taking a snort you called him and he talked you down? Like that?”
Cody said, “Like that. But there’s a lot more to it. Nobody can talk a drunk out of a drink except a fellow drunk. He was good, too. He appealed to my best nature.”
“I didn’t think you had one.”
“I don’t,” Cody said. “But I’ve got a kid. I don’t see him much, but he looks up to me because he doesn’t know any better.”
Larry’s face softened some. Not much.
Said Cody, “My dad was a drunk. My mom was a drunk. My uncle was a drunk. My kid could go down the same road. I don’t want him to. So I want to clean myself up. Not give him a role model, you know?”
Larry looked away. “I hate this kind of sharing. Men talk to each other, they don’t share. Sharing’s for assholes.”
“Yeah,” Cody said, “believe me, I hate this Oprah bullshit. But it is what it is. I’m learning to find out what it’s like to be clean and sober. I’ve been pretty much drunk for twenty years. And you know what?”
“What?”
“It sucks. I don’t know how you people do it-too much reality. But Hank was good because he understood and didn’t try to act superior. He knew where I am now. He went through it himself, and he was a tough bastard. Marine. Desert Storm, in fact. And he did it all on his own. His wife left him years ago and he had no brothers or sisters. His parents were dead. He did the Twelve Steps on his own.”
Moments went by. The rain thrummed on the roof.
“Well, good for you,” Larry said. “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. But it seemed you were holding out, like testing me or something.”
“I told you it wasn’t like that.”
Larry took a deep breath and threw his shoulders back. “So can we get on with this now? Can we figure this stupid thing out?”
“Yeah,” Cody said, grateful.
“So what did Hank Winters do? Was he coming back here from a trip?”
“Probably. He was on the road most of the time. A pharmaceutical rep. His territory was the whole mountain west, from what he told me. He didn’t tell me the specifics, but he was gone three out of four weeks a month. He stayed sober even though he was surrounded by temptation-all those airports and hotel bars. Think about it. He once told me, ‘Even if you’re not at home you can always find a meeting.’ And he did.”
Larry nodded. “So how could he be your sponsor if he was gone all the time?”
“I thought we put that away,” Cody said. “But since you asked, I called him on his cell. He’d answer me any time of the day or night, wherever he was. I pulled him out of some big meeting once with a hospital and he took the call and talked me down for forty-five minutes. A couple of weeks later he said he got beat out of a commission for five thousand bucks. But he took my call. That’s the kind of guy he was.”
“A good guy,” Larry said.
“Yes,” Cody said, looking down at his sodden boots and feeling his chest contract. “A saint. My saint. And not the type of guy who would buy a liter of Wild Turkey and drink the whole bottle alone. He just wouldn’t do that. No way. That’s why I think this wasn’t an accident.”
“Who would kill him? Somebody local? Any ideas?” Larry asked. But it was obvious he wasn’t convinced.
“No idea in the world,” Cody said. “But AA is its own world. We share-I mean talk about-the most intimate things in the world with each other. But other than his job, I don’t really know much about him. That’s the way it works.”
Larry took a couple of steps toward Cody. His voice was low. He said, “Cody, I know you want to believe that. And you may be right. But shit, man, isn’t it ‘once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic?’ I mean, maybe something happened. Maybe he just fell off the wagon. You can’t say it doesn’t happen.”
“Not Hank,” Cody said. But a kernel of doubt had been planted.
“Maybe just this once he fucked up,” Larry said. “It happens. You know it happens.”
“NOT HANK,” Cody said.
“Okay,” Larry said, putting his free hand up, palm out. “I’m just sayin’.”
“There’s something else,” Cody said, suddenly feeling as if the floor was buckling under his feet. “I checked out his briefcase.”
Larry said, “And…?”
“His coins were gone. He always kept his coins in a plastic sleeve in his briefcase. He’d bring them out whenever we met face to face and show them to me. He was so proud of them.”
Suddenly, the kitchen flooded with light. Cars had entered the parking area. Cody could see Larry without lifting up his flashlight. In the glare of the lights through the rain-streaked windows, the surface of Larry’s face and head was patterned with shadowed rivulets that looked like channels in an ant farm.